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Boros Garrison Discussion

3 weeks ago

There are actually 4 effects that care about number of artifacts,
Inventors' Fair
, and I dropped
Boros Garrison
completely because it was slowing down the deck, and while I enjoy the card immensely because of art and it feels fantastic when you are able to replay the land next turn and untap with it, it's just not worth wasting an entire turn in the early game.

4 weeks ago

The issue with the artifact lands is that there is enough artifact hate out there that adding them to help just one instance of metalcraft seems not worth it. If you were running
Mox Opal
and a few other effects, sure, however here the reward doesn't seem to match the risk. Not to mention its for a card which just helps equip costs and by the time you're actually going ot be playing and equiping stuff where it's actually relevant you already have metalcraft.

For
Boros Garrison
, it's fine if you want to run a crad because you like the art or the flavour. But overall the ravnica bounce lands are detrimental in the vast majority of decks. In opposition to what was said, you can't count them as two lands. They are at best a land that taps for two mana, however for most decks the drawbacks are significant enough not to run. The issue with them is not that they don't do anything the turn the come down but that they negate turn two especially. Turn two for most decks is where they start pulling ahead. A majority of ramp spells are 2 CMC and they completely undo your second turn. Even with a
Temple of Triumph
, you could play it turn one to have access to two mana on your second turn. But you can't do that with the ravnica bounce lands. And on top of that, they aren't ramping either.
Ancient Tomb
gives you +1 on your pool at the cost of life. These cards don't. The only time they could be somewhat useful is if you're struggling to hit your third land. And in that case, you should be aiming your ramp to be 2 CMC rather than 3+.

Yes, solemn gives you a card when it dies, but a skilled oppoennt will understand opportunity cost. "I could not attack and they won't get a card, but that completely delays my strategy. Or I could attack, give them a single card and work towards killing them". If your opponent isn't going to attack because of a Solemn, chances are they aren't going to attack because of a few tokens, which will do much more work in the long run.

8/9 ramp pieces is not a good amount of ramp. Especailly with a 6 CMC commander and a curve peaking at 4 CMC. You should be aiming for somewhere in the 15 ramp card effects, with a bunch of them being 2 CMC (or less if you can). If you were running 14 other ramp cards and had Solemn, I would say that's fine. But with a relatively low amount of ramp and having a bunch of expensive (read 4 CMC) ramp cards, I would say that you need to slim your curve. While yes, anything less than 5 mana technically ramps into your commander, the cheaper it is, the more of them you can chain together. Because assuming you're hitting your land drops, playing two 2 CMC rocks on turns two and three will net you a turn four commander, while playing a single
Hedron Archive
on turn four will net you a turn five commander. That's why in general slightly weaker but more ramp is better than less ramp which is more powerful. You cna curve that of course, but the majority of your ramp should be cheap to play.

The beauty of running more ramp as well means you can get some serious value from cards like
Bludgeon Brawl
late game to turn all your rocks into
Bonesplitter
s.

The idea of in a relatively low ramp deck going and cutting cheaper cards for more expensive ones seems ridiculous to me. I get that yo uwant to have a way of closing games out, however fattenign up your curve is the exact opposite of what you want to do. This just in general slows your gameplan and more than that can make many hands unplayable. Most curves want to have the vast majority of cards in the 1-3 CMC slot and taper off as they get higher up, regardless of playstyle of the playstyle of the deck (for commander at least). Adding a bunch of high end bombs seems counterintuative. Not only are they harder to cast, they draw more hate and are easier to deal with. The better way of closing out games would be to design the deck so that cards get more powerful as they synergise with other cards in the deck. For example, running a bunch of tokens and then using cards like
Mikaeus, the Lunarch
,
Cathars' Crusade
, etc. means that rahter than your opponent beaing able to play any single point removal spell to deal wit hyour threat, all of a sudden you have a bunch of creature that they have to deal with. Higher synergy decks will always be more powerful on average than decks which just run a bunch of curve fattening bombs. this is one of the few things I will agree with DespairFaction on, cards like
Archangel of Thune
would do well here given the token production that you have. And you don't need lifegain. Angel connects, you gain some life and make all your creatures bigger for next turn. As far as finishers go, this is actually a good ome. Cheap mana cost, flier and adds value to the rest of your board.

I think that
Sublime Archangel
isn't a bad fit here, she keeps the curve down and can help close out games by leveraging smaller tokens which trade unfavourably.

Anyway, that's my two cents on the matter. Please don't interpret this as a personal attack - I get that deckbuilding is a very personal thing (for the most part) and I don't want this to come across as belittling. I do however know from both a lot of personal experience and a lot of discussion with many players from across the specturm of casual and competitive that there are some concepts expressed which will ultimately hold the deck back. And if you're ok with that then that's entirely cool. But there are some fairly obvious standouts in both card choices and reasoning which I think is worth offering some counterpoints to.

1 month ago

This deck could use some more ramp, card draw, and lands. Also you have two cards too many in the list so that's a slight problem too.

Some cards to cut would be Sun Titan, Burning of Xinye, Elspeth, Sun's Champion, Great Furnace (It's strictly worse than a basic Mountain in this build as it dies to artifact removal and you have no synergy with it) and kinda Chance for Glory and Hostility. Sun Titan only returns permanents and most of your deck is instants and sorceries. I really don't think you want to destroy and of your own lands so the Burning is pretty bad. You have enough board wipe effects that also synergize with your commander and you don't have much of a token strategy going on so Elspeth seems pretty out of place. I suppose she's a potential alternate win-con, but most your deck has the ability to win off of any number of top-decks late in the game. I see how Chance for Glory is tempting, but it seems like a really niche card and I think I would rather have card draw in its place. Hostility is the card I'd like to see in action before really making a decision on. I feel like it could often just be a dead card because you'll want to be dishing out lots of damage and gaining lots of life with Firesong and Sunspeaker on the field, but I suppose it's another alternate win-con that synergizes with the deck.

2 months ago

Thanks hkhssweiss !
So I have noticed in 3-4 player EDH, if I can't draw enough mana ramp and Uril Auras in time, the board state could very well have a few 10/10 fatties and 30 artifact tokens all pumped with +X/+X. I also consistently run out of cards in hand around turn 8. I either have a opening hand full of mana ramp and lands, or some lands and great auras, but for those times when I can't win early game, I need to Day of Judgment or Constant Mists. Even if I get Uril souped up, my opponents find way to bounce/sacrifice/prevent any creatures to attack.

I am trying to find the balance of:
play enough ramp/aura draw cards so then I can swing before anyone has a chance, therefore I don't need to reset the board
VS
take a few more turns to draw for those game-winning cards, but in trade draw a wrath that may control the board to justify my taking a few more turns. I have lost to tokens/fatties damage after swinging with Uril at one person and not able to kill ALL players, so I have found that I need some way to survive another turn and keep Uril on the field.

Sage's Reverie is conditional like Daybreak Coronet, but for
, I get some card draw out of it and vanilla "+X/+X damage". At most I have seen Uril with 4-5 enchantments and I already can kill someone at that point, so I don't know if it's the best 4 mana for (at most in my situation) 4-5 cards.

Blessing of the Nephilim and Ethereal Armor are great vanilla damage boosters. Blessing adds a guaranteed +3/+3, while Ethereal on it's own gives +1/+1 and first strike, but will need 2 other attached auras to add the +3/+3 that Blessing gives. Now Uril isn't swinging with only an Ethereal armor, so as long as Uril has 2 other enchantments, we get the equivalent damage, AND first strike. Having both on Uril would total +9/+9 for Uril for only , but without a trample Rancor or Shield of the Oversoul, I'm not swinging for lethal yet nor getting damage past blockers.

I recently mainboarded Sigarda, Host of Herons since I hate sacrificing an indestructible Uril, and I can always Aura up Sigarda and swing, but I may consider swapping sigarda out for Tajuru Preserver since it's cheaper for the same 'prevent sacrificing' effect and can be cast early game, but I lose a hexproof flying swinger.

I also mainboarded Pariah as an alt way to prevent/redirect damage. I slap it on an opponent's indestructible or fat creature and now they have to either destroy the aura or remove their own creature before being able to deal damage to me. I know I could run creatures that "when damage is dealt to it, do X", but I would have to have both of those cards on hand to get the benefit, and unless I made it indestructible, it's only giving me utility 1 turn. Ghostly Prison also deters tokens/weenies from swinging at me since the opponent can't pay for all of them, and mana-strapped opponents with large creatures may want to save their mana and instead swing at the other opponent. I kept an opponent from swinging his fatty at me with my Soul Snare and I had a Moment's Peace in hand for the next turn after I popped soul snare.

2 months ago

I actually forgot Force of Will was originally uncommon, honestly. I'd probably not include that in my cube though. It's either ridiculous or horrible depending on the hand. The newly legal Foil seems more balanced.

Ultimately, the rule IS convoluted, but it's also key to the identity of my cube as not having access to a handful of staples means having to adapt a bit. Additionally, while masters sets have legalized many cards, having the rule in place makes masters set release season very fun for me which I enjoy. Same goes for other supplementary produ ts. That's something I want to hold on to.

As for the mana base discussion, I assure you 1 person complaining is not what resulted in the issue. The issue was that cards like Boros Garrison and Wind-Scarred Crag were dead picks in draft. And I wasn't going to only provide dual lands for 7 or 8 guilds. As mentioned before, I could see an argument to banning rare lands that do more than fix mana, I.e. Celestial Colonnade and Strip Mine, as these act much more like spells than lands. But the argument of replacing Blood Crypt with Bloodfell Caves to keep the identity of my cube rings a bit hollow to me. Better mana allows for easier deck building, which also allows for a bit easier drafting. I WANT players to be able to draft red 1 drops and double white 2 drops. I think being able to do so helps balance the aggro decks against the green/white midrange decks that can easily support a deck with more color pips. Now I can understand if you'd disagree with that sentiment, but I'd have to agree to disagree there.

2 months ago

This is a great exercise and reference. My only critique is the lack of bounce lands (i.e. Boros Garrison) or the scry lands (i.e. Temple of Mystery), but my guess is you already had considered those in your Discord discussion. Thanks for putting in the work!

3 months ago

Are you seriously not playing Lyra Dawnbringer in a deck filled with angels? Don't play sword of fire and ice, you're better off playing Sword of Feast and Famine for the better protection and effects, or maybe Sword of Light and Shadow for recursion. Don't run ancient amphitheatre with only one giant you fuckwit. You don't need By Force it's not great either. Boros Garrison is something you should probably run. I'm not entirely sure why you're running Personal Sanctuary like yeah it ignores manabarbs and sulfuric vortex, but it's not really worth it. Run something like Ghostly Prison instead. Also manabarbs is kinda iffy, great with Gisela, not really worth it otherwise. Also Helm of the Host goes infinite with Aurelia and is just a good card anyways.

Boros Garrison occurrence in decks from the last year

Modern:

All decks: 0.03%

Green: 0.23%

Commander / EDH:

All decks: 0.07%

RW (Boros): 1.03%

RBW (Mardu): 0.4%

RUW (Jeskai, America): 0.4%

RGW (Naya): 0.37%

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